Don’t make fun of my baby’s hat

Lentil and I went for a hike a couple of weeks ago. We never made it out of the parking lot. We went from sunny flatland to foggy fast wind hills. The swirls and my own shivering did not deter me. I put on the ergo, extracted Lentil from her Orbit car seat (the bucket), and put her in the ergo. Then she started screaming. I mean you've chopped my hand off, dropped me in a cauldron of boiling oil, poured sand in my eyes screaming.In the parking lot.We aren't all that old at this point thus I'd not perfected things like, oh, dressing my baby for extreme weather changes or getting her in the ergo smoothly. So, there we are, me and screaming baby in a parking lot in the hills. The parking lot overlooks a downward tumble into brambles and trees. Perfect for dumping a body, which is what the clutch of senior citizens on a group hike thought I was doing, I'm sure. As Lentil is shrieking, I open the back of the Jeep to readjust, lay her down, who the hell knows what I was thinking (eventually I laid her down and covered her in my jacket to warm her up). Her sweatshirt is on the back seat, out of reach, and her blanket is on the front seat, seriously out of reach.

Meanwhile the elders are gazing my way with looks ranging from "what the hell are you doing to that baby" to "you are a fool of a mama." One of the women breaks from the pack and strolls towards us. Casually, I can see she wants to survey the damage and see if she needs to call 911. "Are you okay?" she asks. Yes, I tell her, we're fine though I'm a moron. She retrieved Lentil's blanket from the front of the car (I gave this woman my car keys!) and her sweatshirt from the back.

I bundled up the babe in her butt-ugly sweatshirt — I bought it at Grove Street Kids in Berkeley, a fantastic consignment store for children's clothes. I don't know what I was thinking. It has a mechanical moose on the front and is a thick sweatshirt material. We'd put it on her one other time and she hated it. Today, we both hated it.

And, because it was cold out, I put her bunny beanie on. (Note: this is not a picture of Lentil.)

We headed down to the village for a warm-up. Had some milks, changed a diaper, met up with our friend Martha the Realtor for coffee even though neither of us drinks the stuff. Martha hadn't seen Lentil in several weeks so was due for a referesher.

She needed cheese for a dinner that night. We headed up to the cheese store, which I will not name because the owner made fun of my kid.

Here's my baby, developing a diaper rash (though I didn't know it), cold, uncomfortable in her sweatshirt, and tired. We're in this stupidly expensive wine and cheese shop and she melts down. I try to get the sweatshirt off, I realize she needs a new diaper, and the owner says, maybe she hates her hat.

"You know, because the hat doesn't go with her shirt. And those ears are big. Maybe she's telling you not to put that hat on her. Maybe she realizes that a moose or whatever that thing is and the bunny are too much."